This invention relates generally to electronic testing, and more specifically to large scale integration of electronic testing over electronic networks.
To perform large-scale tests on network configurations requires a large number of individual tests to be run. Each test requires its share of resources when it is queued for execution. Most test execution platforms limit the size of the queue because of resource constraints. Thus, when the queue is full, the test execution platform must fall back into some kind of exception condition until an entry becomes available. This bottleneck can disrupt testing and limit the amount of effective testing that can be accomplished on the network.
In large-scale deployments, as many as 1,000 tests per hour are required to fully validate the system being tested. Conventional test configurations call for a platform that prepares and queues tests for execution and a platform that dequeues tests when there are resources available to execute the test. If the number of tests exceeds the size of the queue, and resource constraints dictate that the queue cannot be lengthened, queuing and execution of the tests could be delayed.